After years of severe losses and claims that their cars caught fire, the Palo Alto, Calif. electric car manufacturer Tesla has received some good news to its stockholders and electric car enthusiasts alike. In the past year, the company has seen a decrease in losses and an increase in demand and has revealed new plans to increase their output and profitability in the years to come.

According to the San Francisco Gate, Tesla Motors reported a profit of $103.6 million this past fiscal year, with one-time items excluded, an improvement over the $344.2 million loss of 2012. Including one-time items, which are items that negatively impact earning like restructuring charges, charges for discontinued operations and expenses due to accidents or natural disasters, the company lost $74 millions this year. The Los Angeles Times adds that the company delivered 22,477 cars this past year but will need to increase sales and reduce costs of raw materials and supplies to become consistently profitable, according to analysts.

Elon Musk, Tesla's owner, gave stockholders hope when these figures were announced. "We produced more cars than originally expected in the quarter, aided by manufacturing, design and quality improvements, but also strong efforts from our supply chain," he added. We expect to deliver over 35,000 Model S vehicles in 2014, representing a 55% increase over 2013."

Stock prices rose this week, according to the San Francisco Gate. On Tuesday prices were $207 per stock but it plunged 10 percent on Wednesday. Yet, it soared again to $217 after the stock market closed. Analyst James Albertine, however, does not see this rise as a new trend but rather a fluke due to some other rumors. "We believe current share momentum is likely driven more by chatter around a takeout than (Tesla) fundamentals," he explained.

Rumors have circulated around both Tesla and Apple after it became known that the tech giant had approached the car manufacturer. In an interview with Bloomberg TV's Betty Liu, Musk refused to give a concrete answer to the rumors of being acquired by Apple. "I think that's very unlikely because we need to stay super focused on achieving a compelling -- creating a compelling mass-market electric car," Musk told Liu. "And I'd be very concerned in any kind of acquisition scenario, whoever it is, that'd be become distracted from that -- from that task which has always been the -- the driving goal of Tesla."